On-going
series: Crisis in the Caucasus - 2008
The Russian / Georgian Conflict and Its Impact on AzerbaijanWindow on Eurasia: Original
Blog Article

Florence, December 13 - Rising
unemployment, cuts in the size of the military, drug abuse and
alcoholism, corruption, and increasing attacks on ethnic minorities
"have created [in Russia] a very favorable basis for the
development of fascism," according to one of the leading
foreign policy commentators in Azerbaijan.

Indeed, the situation is so
dire and Russia is so "pregnant with fascism," Vafa
Guluzade said yesterday, that ethnic Azerbaijanis ­ and presumably
members of other groups from other post-Soviet states ­ now
resident in the Russian Federation should "leave there before
it is too late" 1news.az/politics/20081212122453929.html

Guluzade, who earlier served
as Soviet leader Leonid Brezhnev's Arabic translator and as the
late Azerbaijani President Heydar Aliyev's national security
advisor, said that the situation in Russia today resembles the
one in Germany in 1933 which brought Adolf Hitler and the Nazis
to power there.

"God forbid that Russia
will repeat the fate of fascist Germany," he continued,
a danger that could prove threatening to a large number of states
given Moscow's nuclear arsenal. As a result, he said, the entire
world should be paying close attention to what is taking place
in the Russian Federation now.

"The present leadership
of Russia has led its people into poverty," the Azerbaijani
analyst added. "In a week, the losses of Russia have amounted
to 20 billion dollars and lower prices for oil will only make
the situation worse." And Moscow may seek a way out for
itself by "searching for enemies among "the former
Soviet republics."

Such a search for enemies will
lead in the first instance to more attacks against members of
these ethnic communities who are now living and working in Russia,
Guluzade said. And consequently, he issued a call to "our
Azerbaijanis who are living in Russia to leave before it is too
late."

"Bad days are ahead in
Russia," he continued, and "the Russian revolt will
be pitiless and cruel." Indeed, so dangerous is the situation
now that Guluzade said he "would suggest to the former Soviet
republics to help Russia get out of this crisis because if it
does not then the fascists will come to power there, and this
would be a tragedy for all of us."

The beheading of a 20-year-old
Tajik worker near Moscow a week ago, an action for which a hitherto
unknown group ­ the "Military Organization of Russian
Nationalists" ­has taken responsibility, has called
attention to the more than 250 attacks on ethnic minorities over
the first ten months of this year grani.ru/Society/Xenophobia/Skinhead/m.145284.html

And that attack, which has been
criticized by the Tajik embassy in Moscow and led to the formation
of a special investigative group among the Russian force structures,
may represent a new stage in this kind of violence because its
organizers say they plan to attack Russian officials if the latter
do not reduce the number of Central Asians and Caucasians working
in Russia.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin
recently promised to cut the quota for the arrival of such workers
in half in 2009, and polls suggest there is widespread popular
support for reducing the number of new arrivals although not
for the expulsion of those already living in the Russian Federation.

But there are three additional
aspects to the current case and the situation it highlights.
First, some Russian officials investigating the attack have suggested
it may have nothing to do with the Russian nationalists but be
the product of "criminal" activities within the Tajik
diaspora, a view many Russian nationalists will read as meaning
the authorities are on their side.

Second, rising unemployment
among guest workers in Russia will have an almost immediate and
potentially destabilizing impact on the countries of the former
Soviet space. In many of them, transfer payments from their nationals
who have gone to work in Russia provide a significant portion
of the incomes of many within their home countries.

And third, Guluzade's warning
that guest workers in Russia are likely to be among the first
attacked carries with it the implicit suggestion that Moscow
might attack another former Soviet republic, given the boost
the Russian authorities got among the Russian population for
invading Georgia.